Russia blocks millions of Google and Amazon IPs to ban Telegram

Russia’s telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor has blocked ranges of Internet Protocol addresses belonging to Amazon and Google in an effort to ban Telegram.

This comes after Telegram was ordered to comply with laws that require it to hand over decryption keys for user messages to a Russian spy agency.

The messaging app refused to hand over encryption keys, which it said don’t exist in the first place.

As a result of refusing to comply, Roskomnadzor is blocking the app in Russia.

Telegram had switched to Amazon Web Services to avoid the block, but Roskomnadzor responded by banning access to IP address blocks belonging to Amazon – 655,352 IP addresses in total – according to TorrentFreak.

It also requested that Google and Apple remove the service’s mobile applications from their respective app stores in Russia. APKMirror also received a request from Russia to remove the Telegram app in Russia.

The Amazon IP bans failed to take Telegram offline, however, so millions of IP addresses belonging to Google were targeted.

At the time of writing, 17.1 million IP addresses were blocked in Russia, affecting the country’s banking and retail sectors that rely on Amazon and Google’s cloud services.